C & G Chord - How Long To Learn?

[srbell]

Make sure you're concentrating your practice on the area that seems to be giving yiu the most trouble - chord changes. You said the G chord was no problem, so hone in on the C chord. Pay attention to how your hand and fingers feel - the shape or pattern they're in when you're playing it. Then, after playing the chord, raise your fingers just slightly and bring them all back down together to form the chord. All at once, not individually. As that gets easier start raising your fingers a little higher off the strings. Before you know it you'll be nailing it. Once that is easy then try playing G for 4 beats/strums the play C for 4 strums without missing a beat. Anticipate the change to C and be prepared for it. Here is the key - you may think you can't do it but you can. Put all of your fingers down for the C chord all at once, remembering the shape you practiced earlier and how your fingers were positioned. Overcoming this is more about pushing yourself mentally than physically. If you try and dont get it perfect thats ok - do it again. As your moving from G to C get your fingers into the shape of the C chord before you put them down, and dbring them down together. Once you see you can do it your confidence will increase and it will become second nature.

[paulp1960]

Maybe try an E minor just for a change of routine.

[1neeto]

Originally Posted by paulp1960

Maybe try an E minor just for a change of routine.

Em, C, G is a popular chord progression in G. Add the D, and you have the popular I IV V vi chords in G. It’s more than than a change of routine, it’s finding the chords that fit in a certain key.

Originally Posted by srbell

Make sure you're concentrating your practice on the area that seems to be giving yiu the most trouble - chord changes. You said the G chord was no problem, so hone in on the C chord. Pay attention to how your hand and fingers feel - the shape or pattern they're in when you're playing it. Then, after playing the chord, raise your fingers just slightly and bring them all back down together to form the chord. All at once, not individually. As that gets easier start raising your fingers a little higher off the strings. Before you know it you'll be nailing it. Once that is easy then try playing G for 4 beats/strums the play C for 4 strums without missing a beat. Anticipate the change to C and be prepared for it. Here is the key - you may think you can't do it but you can. Put all of your fingers down for the C chord all at once, remembering the shape you practiced earlier and how your fingers were positioned. Overcoming this is more about pushing yourself mentally than physically. If you try and dont get it perfect thats ok - do it again. As your moving from G to C get your fingers into the shape of the C chord before you put them down, and dbring them down together. Once you see you can do it your confidence will increase and it will become second nature.

This is great advice. You must be able to make the shape like it’s second nature before you can think of transitioning to and from other chords.

[Whitey#1]

I don't think I am ever going to get this.

[Riverwolf]

Originally Posted by Whitey#1

I don't think I am ever going to get this.

Maybe not. Not everyone does.
Some say if it was easy then everybody would do it.
I say if it was easy then nobody would do it.
Either way, most folks will not become accomplished guitarists regardless of practice time.
However, I feel most anyone should be able to learn a few 3 chord campfire type songs.
For most of us it is simple repetition, over and over.
How bad do you want it?
Bad enough to do 500 repetitions everyday?, twice a day?, all day?.
G - C
G - D
C - D
Over and over...

[SunnyDee]

Maybe post a video and someone can help? I usually think that if I make a mistake twice I'm doing it wrong, which usually means I need to slow down and find the error. Maybe you're practicing something you shouldn't, in which case repeating is not the answer. And, really, I think we all know that there are some teachers out there who aren't great. Maybe you're not getting the best advice? Maybe the specific guitar is legitimately hard to play for you? I went to visit my daughter recently and they had a guitar there that no one had gotten far on and, honestly, it was a very bad guitar. I could play it, but it wasn't easy. So, maybe show us what's going on?

[Whitey#1]

Still no luck here. Still cant go from C to G to C to G to C to G, etc, etc, like one needs to.

Starting to feel like I will just never get there.

r/Mike

[rick-slo]

Perhaps take up a different instrument. Piano is nice.

[mattbn73]

It's been suggested more than once that you should post a video. That's great advice and probably the only remaining thing to do to get decent further feedback here. There's really no other way to judge.

Many adults are overly hard on themselves about not sounding exactly like their heroes on recordings, while others have legitimate physical problems with playing. There's absolutely no way of knowing without seeing it though.

Shoot a video of yourself playing the chord changes on smart phone, and post it.

[mr. beaumont]

Yep. I can almost guarantee if I saw you do it, I could at least diagnose the problem.

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by Whitey#1

My instructor, after covering some of the basics (which I pretty much already had down), has started me out learning the C & G Chords.

Hmmm....curious what you and your instructor consider "the basics" if it doesn't include these two basic chords...

Most of us only have our own experience to go by. I started learning guitar as a young kid after I already had been playing violin for a while. My dad and sister both played guitar so I had live-in help. Starting as an adult with a job, family, other commitments is way different. If your instructor has been doing this for a while she/he could give you a better idea of what "normal" is. Fortunately the process isn't linear - it'll take a lot less time to learn new chords.

[harpspitfire]

a guitar is not like a musical instrument where you have to know music and learn note reading to be able to play it, i got friends who played over 50 years and did gigs, about all they know is where to put their fingers,
1) do you really practice daily chord changing?
2) do you have a physical impairment that limits your fingers?
3) before you started. did you play an air guitar? which way did you 'hold' it? maybe your a leftie playing a RH guitar and just cant get it
4) do you feel this something you can do? this is part of your talent ego and positive feeling, if not, your just fighting it making learning difficult

[Merak]

Have you tried learning other chord transitions? Am to C is a little easier. Metronome can help by taking your mind off your fingers gradually and letting your body memory take over. You probably have it but your mind maybe can’t release control to your body. Thinking too much is what I mean.

[RJVB]

Hmmm, I picked up a guitar last summer after almost 10y of not making any music (before which I was a pretty decent baroque violin player). I get that knowing chords and transitions between them is crucial for shall-we-say non-classical music and am personally struggling with how one can get such things into one's head (and then "map" it to a fingerboard). But surely that's not all there is to playing guitar.

Of course I do my share of practising chord transitions, but I'm trying very hard not to get too focussed on anything to the point where it gets to be a "fixation" (directly translation from the French) and you block on it. That seems to be what's happening in the OP, in part because his (?) teacher won't proceed until the student has mastered a step.

That's an OK practise with young kids who still need to learn to judge themselves, but even then you should accept the fact that not every student is a prodigy master in the making whom you only need to tell that something's wrong until it isn't. To me the key is in recognising progress AND it levelling off and then proceed with the knowledge you can always come back to basic things.

Whitey: do yourself a favour (before you lose courage) and find other inroads on the guitar where you can make progress that's easier for you. If you know how to read music (learn it if you don't), find scores for simpler songs and study those. Not only will you be making music and thus taking pleasure (the ultimate goal, no?), you'll also be getting more confident on the instrument and developing muscle control that you will need anyway ... but with less risk of getting used to playing with cramps. So put those chords aside for a while and come back to them in a week or even longer if you find that just the thought of them makes you lock up. Once you *can* approach them without apprehension again you'll probably find that they come much more naturally all of a sudden because guess what, you'll have been playing them in some form or another.

When I committed myself I went out and bought myself a beginners' method (the 3-book course from Hal Leonard) but also a few video courses that come with tabs:
- Doug Macleod's 101 Blues Essentials. Iif anyone can motivate me to practice licks it's him - but he also points out there's so much more because otherwise "you're just licking" instead of making music I also really like his advice not to be afraid to get lost on the guitar (while exploring) because that's when you'll "get found".
- Mike Dowling's Uptown Blues/American Roots Guitar. Tall order, but some of the pieces are doable
- Tony Rice's Bluegrass Guitar book (no video on this one). This one is useful in that it isn't about chords at all although much of the transcribed solos he guides you through are of course little more than arpeggiated chords.

and I enrolled in my local musicschool knowing that officially only classical guitar is taught in this country and that I'd be waiting for them to hire an additional teacher.

Granted, I've learned how to teach myself so I sat down with the Hal Leonard book and started working through it, trying not to skip too much since it's clearly aimed at kids or people who have no music experience at all (and avoided using the pick it assumes you'll be using). Guess what, it doesn't start with chords, and only begins to introduce them in partial fashion gradually, coming back to the same basic chords multiple times to make them more complete. In the meantime you're playing simple melodies which of course you can elaborate on if you feel like it.

It took the school six months to hire a teacher, and while she admits to knowing only classical music (and not much more than I about "playing chords") she agreed to teach me on my non-classical guitar and work on a mix of "appropriate" popular music and ditto classical music (mostly from the beginning of the 20thC). That includes the 1st Gymnopédie (Eric Satie) and compositions by Annette Kruisbrink.
So since the beginning of this year I have a weekly 30min lesson which acts mostly as a driving point to work on something specific during the week. One of the things I've been working through is Dowling's Nitpickin' which is just not too hard and actually good enough a composition to remain interesting. It's also something one where you can start taking liberties (and enjoy yourself) once you are starting to get the notes in your fingers. Right now I'm also finishing Kruisbrink's "Grumpy Brother". But every day I start my work session with a set of fingerpicking exercises from Justin Johnson (which I play on open strings in order to contentrate on my right hand), then a few of a series pieces for warming up my left hand which include an exercise from Tony Rice's book, a couple of arpeggiated bass lines from the Hal Leonard method and simple bluesy foundations that I can play for long minutes and only get more into the mood to make music.
We finished the Gymnopédie weeks ago but since I still have the notes committed to memory I still play through it regularly when I feel like taking a break or don't want to put the guitar away yet. I don't always get through it perfectly, but that's just not the point - and I do find that the couple of remaining stumbling blocks are coming more naturally.

Hope this long-winded post gives you some inspiration to continue, and how.

Above all do not hesitate to discuss with your teacher. Remember who's paying who, so negotiate something that allows you to continue in a constructive fashion while being acceptable for him too. There are many roads leading to Rome, and your progress is his professional goal (and a priori along any of those roads).

[Whitey#1]

I can record a video on my iPhone but how do I get it onto this Forum?

r/Mike